Holocaust Survivor Speaks to Class

First they came for the Communists,

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists,

and I did not speak out,

because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists,

and I did not speak out,

because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I did not speak out,

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Written by: Pastor Martin Niemoller, 1945

Tuesday, we had a dynamic Holocaust survivor speak to our class. Nathan Kranowski was born in Paris in September of 1937 of Polish immigrant parents. In 1941, the Nazis controlled the French police, and they instructed them to arbitrarily arrest "foreignors." The Nazis had decided the citizens would not fear or question their own police, so they were to identify and register all Jews, giving them an ID card with the designation: Juif, then they were to arrest them and ship them by train to Auschwitz to be killed.

The arrests began the summer of 1941; Nathan, an only child, was 3-4 years old and has few memories of the arrests since he was so young. He later learned that his father, Wolfe Kranowski, was stopped on the street in August of 1941 and asked for his papers. He was then taken to Drancy, a French concentration camp about ten miles north-east of Paris. After spending 11 months in Drancy, records show he was put on a train to Auschwitz on 19 July 1942. The doors of the cattle car were sealed after the men were shoved inside, where they had to stand for 2.5 days with no water and no food. When the cars were opened at Auschwitz, often many inside were dead. His father, on Convoy #7, was probably killed within days of his arrival.

Nathan lived with his mother in their apartment after his father was arrested. On 23 July 1942, the French police came for his mother. (They first arrested Jewish men, then the women and children later.) Nathan remembers two men in uniform in the apartment, one of them looking through the silverware drawer. The police took his mother, but not the child. Nathan somehow got to his aunt's apartment, in the same complex. His mother was taken to Drancy where, after six days, she was put on the train to Auschwitz. She was dead 7 days later.

Nathan's aunt, fearing danger to her little nephew, sent him to a Catholic family she knew who lived on a farm. They changed his first name to Pierre as Nathan at that time was a very Jewish name. After that period of time, Nathan spent time in two different orphanages. His aunt in Paris brought him back to live with her, but she had a nervous breakdown and had other health issues, so she sent him to her sister in New York. This aunt and uncle raised Nathan, sending him to school and on to college. He went on to get his PhD and teach at Hollins, Virginia Tech, and Radford University before he retired.

Nathan Kranowski showed us some sepia-toned pictures. Certainly the most emotion-charged photo was one he believes is his parents' wedding picture, two young, happy people in ordinary clothes (as poor Polish immigrants, they would have probably been married in the town hall). As young as he was when they were put to death, he is saddened that he has no memories of them, but he is proud that his grown son has named his daughter after Nathan's mother.

Dr. Marcia Horn, coordinator of the Holocaust class at Ferrum College, has interviewed Nathan as part of the Holocaust survivor project. There are 12 interviews stored at the Stanley Library at Ferrum.